


Haven

by beetle



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bull's Chargers may make appearances, But I actually want people to read it so. . . ., Clubbing, Dom/sub, Doribull, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Light Angst, Light BDSM, M/M, Smut, So I was gonna call this thing "Adoribull", Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, rarepairs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 09:10:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11078487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: Havenis an awful, gauche club full of awful, gauche men, and yet . . . Dorian Pavus’s friends keep dragging him there. Fluff. Pure fluff. And some smut. Absolutely no redeeming value beyond that. Written for the prompts: “Doribull” and “look, I'm sorry about what happened, but I was so bored.”





	Haven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hotot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotot/gifts).



> Notes/Warnings: Modern AU.

 

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened, but—I was _so bored_!”

 

Dorian could only gape at his _very_ -soon-to-be ex-boyfriend for long moments, then laugh incredulously. Around them, lights and horrible house-music swirled and thumped and congealed.

 

“I was gone for literally _eight minutes_!” Dorian exclaimed, holding up their hard-won drinks and shaking his head as he gazed up at a more puzzled than apologetic Lars. The blighter even had the temerity to scratch his head as if _Dorian_ was the one being difficult.

 

“It was a really _long_ eight minutes, though,” Lars finally said, shrugging his broad shoulders—oh, how Dorian had _loved_ holding onto those shoulders while climbing Lars’s sculpted, muscle-bound body like a flesh-toned tree—and managing to look even _less_ savvy than usual. His blue eyes were guilt- and shame-free. Never mind that his erstwhile boyfriend had caught him pinning some pointy-faced little twink to the wall parallel the club’s bar, while said boyfriend had been hard at work procuring another round of drinks.

 

“Really. _That’s_ your excuse—that you were so very bored in my absence that it didn’t occur to you to text a friend or perhaps play _Pokemon GO_ , but instead, to grab the nearest piece of jailbait and stick your tongue down his throat?”

 

Lars smiled, bright and winning and completely without irony. “Yes! That’s it exactly!”

 

Gaping again, then shaking his head . . . _again_ . . . Dorian shoved the drinks at a startled Lars, threw his hands up, and spun away on his heels.

 

He shoved his way through the flailing, gyrating crowds, smacking the occasional hand off his arse. Soon, he was storming out of _Haven_ , for what he hoped was the last time, too angry and too  _done_ to note the many covetous, considering gazes that watched him go . . . including that of the large, silent bouncer, sitting in the shadowed recess by the door.

 

#

 

“Go to _Haven_ again?!” Dorian scoffed at Felix six days later. He refilled his best friend’s glass of wine to the top despite Felix’s half-hearted demurring. “Are you _mad_?!”

 

Felix Alexius and his boyfriend, Krem Aclassi, exchanged a glance, just as Tristan Lavellan and his girlfriend, Maevaris Tilani, exchanged a similar one.

 

As usual, Dorian was the fifth wheel during the twice-monthly couples’ night dinner. (A fact which he was willing to ignore as long as his circle of friends were.) Not that any of the idiots and assholes he invited to these dinners ever fit in . . . even among Dorian’s varied and eccentric circle . . . but it was the principle of the thing.

 

After all, Felix, confirmed bachelor and demisexual _Felix_ , had found someone he not only meshed well with, but someone who did wonders for his iffy libido.

 

“C’mon, Pavus,” Felix’s _someone_ said in his quintessentially _dude-bro way_ , his light-brown eyes twinkling at Dorian. “It’s not like you to be gun-shy just because a bad relationship ended there.”

 

“ _A_?” Dorian bent a waspish look at Felix’s uber-masculine lover—though Dorian had it on good authority that in bed, all that machismo went out the window and Krem liked nothing better than when Felix had him on his back, legs up in the air, knees by his ears—until the younger man had the grace to blush and shrug. Dorian snorted. “Try eleven. _Eleven_ bad relationships that began and/or ended at that viper-pit of a club.”

 

“ _Really_?” Krem’s squinty eyes and wholesome face settled into lines of disbelief that made him look younger than his twenty-four years. He glanced to Felix for confirmation. The other man nodded once, his wan, pale countenance gone sad for a moment.

 

“Dorian’s not had a good run of luck at _Haven_. That place can be . . . rather awful. And gauche.”

 

“‘S where I met you, love, so it’s not as bad as all _that_ ,” Krem murmured, leaning in to kiss Felix’s pale lips tenderly. The older man responded with gentle, but passionate intensity. Dorian, seated once more, rolled his eyes and sipped from his own glass of merlot, trying not to be eaten alive by jealousy. Then he turned to Tristan and Maevaris. The former was just standing up with a kiss on the crown of Maevaris’s blonde—for the moment—head, before striding off kitchenward to get another bottle of Kirkwall Red Ale from the fridge (Dorian only kept the swill on-hand for the lanky, enigmatic blacksmith).

 

“Dorian’s problem isn’t that _Haven’s_ such a pit—though it is,” Tristan said laconically, as he strode back to the dining room table with his ale and another kiss for his girlfriend. “His problem is that he has _terrible_ taste in men.”

 

“Or perhaps that _Haven_ is peopled almost _entirely_ _with_ terrible men, and _you_ bastards keep dragging me there?” Dorian crooked one perfectly-groomed brow. Maevaris chuckled, throaty and low, and turned her green—for the moment—gaze on Tristan. Between her contacts, bleached page-boy, and her cocoa-brown skin, and her blood-red sundress and rose-gold jewelry, she was all contrast and color, flash and fire.

 

Many were the men who’d fallen to her charms . . . but Maevaris had only ever allowed two men into her guarded heart: her late husband, Thorold Tethras, and now, Tristan Lavellan.

 

At first, Dorian hadn’t known _what_ to make of the wry, self-effacing man. Now . . . he _still_ didn’t, but he could believe and accept that, after nearly a year together, Tristan was and would be an integral part of Maevaris’s life.

 

“I think Dorian’s absolutely right,” Maevaris said her commiserating gaze lighting gently on her closest friend. “If we keep dragging the poor boy to the same shit place with the same shit people, and expecting different results . . . that makes us rather insane, does it not?”

 

“Thank you, Maevaris!” Dorian toasted his _second oldest_ friend. She toasted him back with her glass of dry, sweet moscato.

 

“Well, pit, or not, I start tending bar there tomorrow night, so . . . it’d be nice to have a little support on my maiden-voyage.” Krem made a pathetic face in Dorian’s direction until the other man groaned and rolled his eyes again. “It’d mean a lot to me if you’d put in an appearance, Pavus. Even if it’s just for an hour.”

 

“Ugh. Won’t _Felix_ be there to cheer you on, Cremisius?” Dorian examined his merlot as if for imperfections. “And your _delightful_ friends?”

 

“We _all_ will be,” Tristan said, his pale-blue eyes sweeping the table to end up back on Dorian. “Even Zahra and Sera will be there.”

 

Dorian made a face. “Lovely. Between Zahra’s aggressiveness and Sera’s . . . _Sera_ -ness . . . it should be a spectacle of an evening! Who _wouldn’t_ want to tag-along!” he exclaimed with forced cheer that didn’t touch his storm-grey eyes.

 

Krem, however, didn’t notice, excited as he was that all the members of his relatively new-found tribe would be at his bartending debut. “Brilliant! I’ll even comp your first couple of drinks, mate! I’m sure Bull wouldn’t mind.”

 

Dorian’s brows shot up. “ _Bull_?”

 

Krem grinned. “My boss. Back before he bought _Haven_ , he used to be the bouncer there—and sometimes he still is—and I used to try and sneak in damned near every weekend from the time I was fifteen.” Snorting, Krem leaned against Felix, who put an arm around him with a tired, but affectionate smile. “Must’ve turned my scrawny arse away a thousand times, Bull . . . but when I went back the very first night I was legal to drink, he bought me my first six shots . . . then put me in a taxi home when I wound up snoring under the table of my booth.”

 

“How charming.” Dorian sniffed. Tristan laughed, his rumbling near-baritone as rich as sun-warmed honey.

 

“Bull _would_ do that,” he said, fondly. Dorian glanced at him curiously.

 

“ _You_ know this mysterious Bull, too?”

 

“Well.” Tristan shrugged lazily, brushing his mussy, brick-red hair over his narrow shoulder. “We . . . have some people—and some kinks—in common. Attend a lot of the same . . . social gatherings. . . .”

 

Dorian made a face. “‘Social gatherings’? Does that mean some weird sex-thing.”

 

Tristan’s reply was a smirk.

 

“And _you’re_ alright with this?” Dorian asked Maevaris. She shrugged, too, elegant and graceful.

 

“With _what_ , exactly? My dominant, alpha-male boyfriend being secure enough to be friends with _another_ dominant, alpha-male?” She snorted. “But, of course.”

 

Dorian glanced at Tristan and the other man winked. Blushing, Dorian cleared his throat. “Well, that’s . . . fine, I suppose.”

 

“Glad we have your approval,” Tristan purred and Dorian blushed, but tilted his chin up haughtily.

 

“Anyway,” Krem said, smirking and tucking his head under Felix’s chin, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “One last hurrah at _Haven_ , Pavus. To speed me on my way. That’s all I ask.”

 

“Fine, fine,” Dorian capitulated, rolling his eyes yet again and taking a grumpy slurp of his merlot. “But only for an hour. And I expect three, free mixed drinks, _minimum_.”

 

“You mean those fruity, poofter drinks you fancy so much?” Krem’s brows shot up playfully, and he laughed and went on before Dorian could get worked up. “Right, whatever you want, Pavus. And hey: Maybe I’ll introduce you to Bull, while you’re there. If he’s not too busy, that is.”

 

Dorian huffed. “As if that’s a selling-point!”

 

“Well, it certainly should be,” Tristan murmured, then frowned, even as his eyes lit up.

 

Krem’s eyes widened, too, and both men they shared a glance, which they then shared significantly with their significant others. Then, all four were turning bright, considering eyes on Dorian, who looked up from pouring more merlot into his nearly empty glass.

 

“What?” he demanded defensively, meeting each shining, speculative gaze with growing suspicion. It was Krem, grinning and with a twinkle in his kind eyes, who responded.

 

“Nothing, Pavus. Just admiring, your, er . . . hair,” he said, and like a signal was given, everyone aimed their glances at other things as they hurriedly muttered agreement. Dorian watched them all be conspicuously inconspicuous for a minute before draining half his merlot in one long swallow, eyeing a once-more-smirking Tristan with deep disdain. Next to Tristan, Maevaris was as pleasantly unreadable as ever.

 

Krem smirked, and hid it with his hand for a moment, before leaning into his lover a bit more.

 

“Chief’s gonna _love_ him, babe,” he murmured against Felix’s stubbly, slightly sallow cheek, before kissing it. “How did we _not_ think of this _sooner_?”

 

Felix merely smiled, absent and small, and steered the conversation to Zahra Adaar’s and Sera Emmald’s latest efforts at organizing civil disobedience—the reason they missed dinner this night: the fomenting of rebellion in the form of sit-ins and baked goods sales—gamely weathering his own illness, and Dorian’s sporadic jabs and acerbic wit like the old pro he was. Maevaris continued to look lovely and unruffled—as innocent as the driven snow.

 

But Krem’s big, eager grins and Tristan’s crooked, knowing smirks almost gave the game away.

 

TBC

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi to yer bug on [Tumblr](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)!


End file.
